Package Development Model with VS Code

Contents

When you employ the package development model, developing against an org with source tracking, the changes that you make on your local workstation and in your default development org are tracked for you. You move changes between orgs using packaged sets of metadata. (The org development model, in contrast, involves tracking your changes manually and deploying only your changed metadata to other orgs.) For details, see the Package Development Model Trailhead module.

This article describes how to work with orgs that have source tracking, such as scratch orgs, in Visual Studio Code.

Get Started

First, open VS Code and open or create a project:

If you are starting a new project, open the command palette (press Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows or Linux, or Cmd+Shift+P on macOS) and run SFDX: Create Project.

If you are working on an existing project, choose File > Open and navigate to the directory where you stored your project’s source code. If your project isn’t a Salesforce DX project in source format, see Project Setup in the Salesforce DX Developer Guide for information on converting it. Salesforce Extensions for VS Code requires that your project has an sfdx-project.json, and you can work with source-tracked orgs only if your metadata is in source format.

Next, authorize a Dev Hub and create a scratch org.

To authorize a Dev Hub, open the command palette and run SFDX: Authorize a Dev Hub. If you don’t have a Dev Hub, see Enable Dev Hub in Your Org in the Salesforce DX Setup Guide for information about setting one up.

To create a scratch org and set it as your default org for development, run SFDX: Create a Default Scratch Org.

Push and Pull Source

When you use the package development model, keeping your local project and your default development org in sync is simple. Because you deploy your changes to other orgs using packaged sets of metadata, there’s no need to manually track your changes.

To push your source to the new scratch org, run SFDX: Push Source to Default Org.

After you make changes on your local workstation, to push all your changes to the org, run SFDX: Push Source to Default Org again.

After you make changes in your browser, run SFDX: Pull Source from Default Scratch Org to update your project.

To push files each time you save them, set the user or workspace setting salesforcedx-vscode-core.push-or-deploy-on-save.enabled to true.